Written and published in the early 19th century, Don Leon
is unique in English Literature. It is a powerful outcry
against
injustice, a moving and erudite defense of male love, and an account of
Byron's sexuality, which on the whole has proven to be true. Don Leon
forcefully demands the repeal of Britain's sodomy (or “buggery”)
statute, under which men and even adolescent boys were being hanged for
having sex with each other. As a polemic for the emancipation
of
male love, Don Leon is not only far in advance of its time, but is far
in advance of our own time. There is no suggestion of a
minority
psycho-sexual condition (“homosexuality”), nor that males who have sex
with each other are different from other males. The love of
male
for male is treated as potentially part of all human males, not just a
minority.
Among neglected literary masterpieces, Don Leon
heads the list — not only neglected, but vilified and rigorously
suppressed. It is great poetry — a gay epic. At the
same
time, it is undeniably pornographic. In 1934, when Fortune
Press
published Don Leon,
together with its companion poem, Leon
to Annabella, the edition was immediately confiscated by
the London police, who burned all the copies they could find.
Although previous editions have shown “Lord Byron” as the author, he
cannot be the sole author, since the poem refers to events after his
death. The vexed question of authorship is discussed at
length.
This edition reproduces gay historian Louis Crompton's long article,
“Don Leon, Byron, and Homosexual Law Reform”, in which he discusses the
history of the poem and analyzes it in historic context.
This will be the definitive edition of Don Leon.
In preparing it, editor John Lauritsen spent days in New York City's
Morgan Library, which has the unique surviving first edition copy of Leon to Annabella
and the oldest surviving edition of Don Leon
(Dugdale 1866). Both poems, and especially the notes, contain
many passages, some of them long, in foreign languages: Latin, Greek,
French, German, and Italian. This is the first and only
edition
to translate them into English.
This book is of great value to gay historians and students of
Romanticism. It can be read for pleasure by anyone who loves
poetry.

In this book, gay historian John Lauritsen tells a story that will not
be found in standard biographies. In 1822, two great poets —
Percy Bysshe Shelley and George Gordon, Lord Byron — lived in Pisa,
Italy, together with three friends. They met daily in Byron's
palazzo.
Although these men had wives and children, male love was an important
part of their lives. They thought of themselves as “pariahs”
in “exile”, and for good reason. Men and boys in their home
country, England, were being hanged for having sex with each other,
whereas Italy had no such laws.
All of them were ardent Hellenists, who knew that male love had
flourished in Ancient Greece — the same male love that was persecuted
in their own time.
Despite the censorious efforts of friends and family, ample evidence
survives that they loved other males. Homoeroticism in their
works was usually coded for the “initiated”, but was sometimes
amazingly candid.
John Lauritsen de-codes homoerotic references, reinterprets major works
of English Romanticism, and places all in historical context.
He states: “Love and sex between males is an ordinary, healthy part of
the human sexual repertoire. For too long,
biographers have falsified the love lives of the
Shelley-Byron men. The time has come to bring them into the
light of day.”

A Freethinker in Alcoholics
Anonymous.
By John Lauritsen. 120 pages Illustrations, bibliography, and
appendices. ISBN 978-0-943742-23-6. Trade paperback $12. Pagan
Press 2014. Also available as a Kindle book on Amazon for
$4.99 .

A
Freethinker in Alcoholics Anonymous
is written by an A.A. member with 46 years of continuous sobriety, who
believes that he owes his life to the A.A. Fellowship.
There are plenty of books that attack Alcoholics Anonymous — or defend
it uncritically — or supplement it with personal testimonies or various
tweaks. A
Freethinker in Alcoholics Anonymous
will be the first one to celebrate and defend the things in A.A. that
are right, but also, with no holds barred, to criticize the things that
are wrong and ought to be changed.
An atheist for
all of his adult life and a long-time contributor to the secular
humanist press, Lauritsen bases his recovery on the what he calls the
True A.A., the A.A, that works: the 24-Hour Plan and the
Fellowship. He regards the religiosity in A.A. as detrimental
to
recovery from alcoholism.A Freethinker
in Alcoholics Anonymous
is especially written for nonbelievers in recovery, who face difficult
choices: going it alone or attending regular A.A. groups, secular A.A.
groups, or secular alternative groups. But everyone who has
an
alcohol problem, or who knows someone who has one, can benefit from
this book.
Chapters describe Lauritsen's
experiences in recovery, his analyses of the 24-Hour Plan and the A.A.
Fellowship, his research on early A.A. history and forerunners of A.A.,
his objections to recitation of the “Lord's Prayer” in meetings, “A Freethinker's Steps for
Recovery from Alcoholism”,
a heavily annotated Select Bibliography on Alcoholism, suggestions on
how freethinkers can gain fellowship without sacrificing their
principles, and his conclusions on how A.A. should be reformed.

This book contains two
major works. The first is the Aeschylus play, Prometheus
Bound, masterfully translated by Percy Bysshe Shelley and
his cousin, Thomas Medwin. The second is Shelley's own poem, Prometheus
Unbound, which is considered his masterpiece. This book
also includes an appreciation of Prometheus Unbound by John Addington
Symonds, and the poem Prometheus, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, newly
translated from the German.
Editor John Lauritsen demonstrates, through biographical and textual
evidence, that Shelley was the chief author of the Prometheus
translation, which is a masterpiece in its own right. Shelley worked on
it for years, engrossed by the theme of rebellion against tyranny
— dominant in the Aeschylus play and the poems by Goethe and
himself.
Comparisons between the Medwin-Shelley translation of Prometheus
Bound and Shelley's own Prometheus
Unbound show Shelley's amazing versatility at
versification; he was the master of more verse forms than any other
poet in English. Above all, they display Shelley's gift for dialogue,
which he elsewhere demonstrated in his translations from Plato and
Goethe; his play, The
Cenci; and his novels.
The unjustly forgotten Medwin-Shelley translation is still unequalled
for dramatic power and poetry. It is one of the few translations that
could effectively be put on the stage.

Oresteia: The
Medwin-Shelley Translation. Aeschylus, translated by Percy
Bysshe
Shelley & Thomas Medwin. Edited and with Foreword by John
Lauritsen. 192 pages. Trade paperback. $14 ISBN
978-0-943742-16-8. Pagan Press 2011. Also available as a
Kindle book on Amazon for $3.99 .

The Aeschylus plays that make up the Oresteia trilogy —
Agamemnon, Choëphori (Libation
Bearers), and Eumenides
(the
Kindly Ones) — are among the supreme masterpieces of world
literature. This book is the first publication for over 170 years of a
forgotten masterpiece of translation, done by Percy Bysshe Shelley, one
of our greatest poets, and his friend and cousin, Thomas Medwin.
When published separately in the 1830s, under Medwin's byline, the
translations were critically acclaimed as “by far the
best” into English, having “fire, spirit, and
general correctness.” But they were not reprinted, and are
now known to few, if any, students of English literature.
Editor John Lauritsen demonstrates, through both biographical and
textual evidence, that Shelley must be acknowledged as a full
collaborator in the Oresteia translation. Shelley was an
extraordinarily gifted translator, rivaled only, if at all, by Pope and
Dryden. He was not concerned with slavishly literal, word-for-word
translation, but with re-creating the full and entire sense —
the energy, wit, irony and pathos — of the original. Shelley
was the master of more verse forms than any other poet in English: this
translation contains intricate verse forms of his own devising, as well
as traditional sonnets, Spenserian stanzas, and odes.
Shelley's hand is as unmistakable in the dialogue as in the verse
passages, for he was a master of dialogue, as shown in his translations
from Plato and Goethe, his plays, novels, and verse dramas. While
maintaining an Aeschylean formality, the language is idiomatic, and the
lines can effectively be spoken. Given actors and an audience
accustomed to Shakespeare, Oresteia: The Medwin-Shelley
Translation
could successfully be put on the stage.
The Medwin-Shelley translation is still unequalled for dramatic power
and poetry.

Frankenstein is the
most famous work of English Romanticism. Victor Frankenstein and the
monster he created have entered our collective imagination —
through movies, comic books, T-shirts, Halloween masks, etc. They have
entered the discourse of erudite scholars, as well as the man on the
street.

The conventional
belief is that Frankenstein was written by a teenaged girl, Mary Godwin
(later Mary Shelley), who took part in a ghost-story contest in Geneva,
had a nightmare, and was inspired to write a story “which
would frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that
night!”

John Lauritsen's new
book, The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein, explodes the Mary Shelley myth,
demonstrating that Frankenstein
is not just a scary story, but a work
of profound and radical ideas, written by one of the greatest poets in
English, who deliberately concealed his authorship. The book
has three theses:

•
Frankenstein
is a great work, which has consistently been underrated
and misinterpreted.•The real
author of Frankenstein
is Percy Bysshe Shelley.• Male love
is a central theme of Frankenstein.

According to
Lauritsen, male love, as romantic friendship, is a central theme of
Frankenstein.
Sometimes the expressions of male love are remarkably
direct, but at other times they are expressed in coded language or
references known only to the “initiated”. He uses
his skills as a gay historian to decode and interpret these references.

The Man Who Wrote
Frankenstein has nine appendices, which include full texts
of the
following:

• Percy
Bysshe Shelley's Preface to Frankenstein.

• Shelley's
review of Frankenstein.

• The
Introduction to the bowdlerized 1831 edition of Frankenstein
— which was written, at least in part, by William Godwin.

• The 1824
Knights Quarterly
review of Valperga.

• Richard
Garnett's essay on Mary Shelley from the Dictionary of National
Biography.

Witty, sexy and
radiantly beautiful, the Shelley translation of Plato's great Dialogue
on Eros, The Banquet
(or The Symposium)
is by far the best in English.
It has been described as conveying “much of the vivid life,
the grace of movement, and the luminous beauty of Plato”
— “the poetry of a philosopher rendered by the
prose of a poet”.

Although a masterpiece
in its own right, the translation was suppressed and then bowdlerized
for well over a century. In 19th century England, male love —
at the heart of the dialogue — was unmentionable. The Banquet
and Shelley's accompanying essay, “A Discourse on the Manners
of the Antient Greeks”, were not published in their entirely
until 1931, and then in an edition of 100 copies intended
“for private circulation only”.

For many years, the
Shelley translation has been unobtainable, new or used. Pagan Press now
offers a new edition, which is complete and authentic. It is the most
readable edition even published.

The main essay in this
book, “A Freethinker's Primer of Male Love”, is a
celebration and defence of male love from a secular humanist
perspective. Its leading thesis: Male love is good; the opprobrium
suffered by gay men is a product of Judeo-Christian superstition.

A companion essay,
“Paradigms For Gay Liberation”, recounts the ideas
that have informed the movement. The author analyzes how the
present-day movement has lost its bearings, and he indicates a way out
of the thicket.

There are eight
Excursus: Male Beauty, The Golden Legend, Gay Christian Revisionism,
Pluralistic Ignorance, Freethought, Circumcision of the Spirit, The
Aster Epigrams of Plato, and A Pagan Prayer. An annotated Bibliography
provides guidance for further reading.

Published in February
1997 under the Asklepios imprint (for health-related books), this is
the first book to deal comprehensively with the real reasons gay men
are becoming sick in ways that are called “AIDS”.

The editors, John
Lauritsen and Ian Young, and the other six contributors to The AIDS
Cult, examine psychological and cultural issues — the ways
religious intolerance, group fantasies, toxic drugs, pharmaceutical
propaganda, deadly counselling, and a Cult of Doom have acted together
to destroy the health of gay men. In his Introduction Ian
Young writes: “The orthodox view of our protracted health
crisis — as a highly infectious contagion from without
— has been found wanting.... We must seek the causes of this
and other medical dilemmas in our own society, our own assumptions, our
group-fantasies, our regimens, our recreations, and our
rituals.”

Rex
Poindexter's review in 4Front
has been deleted. For an explanation
click here.

The AIDS War:
Propaganda, Profiteering and Genocide from the Medical-Industrial
Complex. By John Lauritsen. 480 pages. Photographs,
graphs, and other
illustrations. Name and subject indices. $20 Trade Paperback.
ISBN 0-943742-08-0 Asklepios 1993.

The AIDS War is a
collection of John Lauritsen's major writings on AIDS, going back to
February 1985. Book and author have been featured on Tony Brown's
Journal, radio talk shows, and American, Canadian,
British, Australian
and German television.

There are 35 chapters,
including:

• The first
interview with molecular biologist Peter Duesberg.

•
“Latex Lunacy” (latex gloves, condoms, etc.).

•
“Poppers: The End of an Era” — a history
of the premier gay drug (nitrite inhalants).

The following titles
are out-of-print: Ioläus
by Edward Carpenter; Male Love: A
Problem in Greek Ethics and Other Writings by John
Addington Symonds;
Death Rush:
Poppers & AIDS by John Lauritsen; Poison By
Prescription: The AZT Story by John Lauritsen.
(The last two books are
available online: just click on the titles.)

ORDERING:

Books can be ordered
directly from
Pagan Press using PayPal. Just send an e-mail
to Pagan
Press
mentioning the books you wish to buy. We will then send you back an
e-mail invoice, which will give the total cost, including shipping and
handling. If you wish to purchase the books, click the Pay button
on the invoice — which takes you to the secure
PayPal site, where you can pay through your
PayPal
account (if you have one) or through a credit card.

For United States
orders postage is free. For overseas air mail, postage will be
calculated at cost. If you use PayPal,
you will make payment in your home currency.